Clan Ó Comáin

Recognised under patronage of the President of Ireland by Clans of Ireland

Coat of Arms — Setting the Record Straight

The Commercial Arms Problem

If you have searched online for a Commane, Cummins or Comyn coat of arms, you will almost certainly have encountered websites selling prints, plaques or jewellery bearing a shield featuring three golden sheaves of wheat on a blue or red background. These are being sold as the "Commane family coat of arms." They are not. They are the arms of the Scottish-Norman House of Comyn — a powerful medieval dynasty descended from the de Comines family of Flanders in northern France — and they have no authenticated connection to the Gaelic Ó Comáin family.

This confusion is not new and is not unique to our family. It arises from centuries of deliberate and accidental conflation between the Gaelic Irish surname Ó Comáin and the Anglo-Norman surname Comyn. English officials recording Irish names phonetically from the 16th century onward frequently wrote "Comyn" when they heard "Comáin" — not because the families were related, but simply because the names sounded similar to an English ear. Over time, commercial heraldry companies — many of which have no scholarly basis for their products — assigned the well-known Norman Comyn arms to anyone bearing any variant of the name, including Commane, Cummane, Coman and Commons.

Buying one of these prints is buying a piece of Scottish-Norman heraldry that belongs to a completely different family. It has nothing to do with the ancient Gaelic Ó Comáin sept of Clare.

Why the Gaelic Ó Comáin Family Has No Historic Coat of Arms

The reason is straightforward and historically important — coats of arms did not exist during the period when the Ó Comáin family was at the height of its power.

The Chiefdom of Tulach Commáin, with its capital at Cahercommaun in the Burren, flourished in the 8th and 9th centuries AD. Archaeological evidence confirms the fort was built in the 9th century and shows no signs of occupation past the 10th century. The family's annalistic record — Suibne mac Comáin as king of the Déisi Munster in 658 AD, Célechair mac Comáin killed in Clare in 705 AD, Colmán mac Comáin dying on the Aran Islands in 751 AD — places the family's documented power firmly in the 7th, 8th and 9th centuries.

Coats of arms as a formal heraldic system did not begin to develop anywhere in Europe until the 12th century, arriving in Ireland only with the Norman invasion after 1169. By the time heraldry existed, the Chiefdom of Tulach Commáin had already faded from the historical record — the site abandoned, the family dispersed.

When the Ulster King of Arms was established in Dublin in 1552 to formally regulate Irish heraldry, the Ó Comáin family had been without territorial authority for over 300 years — since the dispossession of the last chief Conall O'Comain in 1225. By then the family had, as so many Gaelic families did, lost the institutional memory of its own history. This was not unusual. Even the Kavanaghs — one of the most powerful Gaelic dynasties in Leinster — when seeking a formal grant of arms in 1582 declared that they were "uncertain under what sort and manner their predecessors bore the said arms" and had to request the Ulster King of Arms to assign arms to them entirely afresh.

Page 83, Ulster King of Arms 1650

House of Comyn, Scotland

Micheál Ó Comáin, Herald of Arms at the Office of the Chief Herald of Ireland

What About the "Comen" Arms in the Ulster King of Arms Records?

A shield labelled "Comen" does appear in an Ulster King of Arms manuscript from approximately the mid-17th century, placed alongside the arms of the O'Dea family of Clare. At first glance this appears to be a significant finding — a coat of arms recorded for the Commane name in an official heraldic document.

However on careful examination the arms depicted are essentially identical to the standard arms of the Scottish-Norman House of Comyn — the golden garb or sheaf on a plain field. The most likely explanation, supported by the scholarship of E. St. John Brooks in the Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland (1956), is that this entry simply records the Norman Comyn arms under an Irish phonetic spelling of the name. The confusion between the two families was so complete by the 17th century that a clerk recording Clare-area entries could easily have assigned the well-known Comyn arms to the name "Comen" without any investigation into whether the family was of Gaelic or Norman origin.

It is also worth noting that Micheál Ó Comáin — himself a Herald of Arms at the Office of the Chief Herald of Ireland, a man who bore the Ó Comáin name in its Irish form and worked as a consultant herald devising arms for other Irish families — chose to bear arms featuring garbs, consistent with the Comyn heraldic tradition. However his family, as noted in genealogical sources, had also rendered the name variously as Comyns and Cummins, reflecting precisely this centuries-long blurring of the Gaelic and Norman traditions.

The honest conclusion is that no coat of arms can be definitively identified as the authentic heraldic property of the Gaelic Ó Comáin sept of Clare. The Ulster "Comen" entry is most likely the Norman Comyn arms recorded under an Irish spelling, not evidence of an independent Gaelic heraldic tradition.

The Right Approach — A New Grant of Arms

Given this history, Clan Ó Comáin is currently petitioning the Office of the Chief Herald of Ireland for a new grant of arms. This is the correct, honest and most prestigious course of action available to the clan, for several reasons.

First, a new grant from the Chief Herald of Ireland carries full legal standing and heraldic authority — it is a living document, not an ambiguous historical entry of uncertain origin.

Second, it allows the clan to commission arms that genuinely reflect the Gaelic heritage of the Ó Comáin family — incorporating elements connected to the mythical legend of the Newhall mermaid, the Burren, the chiefdom, or the wider Munster and Connacht royal lineage — rather than arms that belong to a Norman family from Flanders with no documented connection to the sept.

Third, it positions the clan correctly within the Irish heraldic tradition. The Office of the Chief Herald recognises the concept of clan or sept arms, under which any member of the clan may display the arms — not merely the individual grantee. A grant to the chief of the clan therefore provides a heraldic identity accessible to all members of Clan Ó Comáin worldwide.

Fourth, this approach follows a well-established precedent. Ancient Gaelic families whose arms were lost with their history have been granted new arms by the Chief Herald throughout the modern period, grounded in their documented noble and royal ancestry. The Ó Comáin pedigree — traceable to the Kings of Déisi Munster and the royal line of Uí Maine, documented in the Book of Lecan, the Book of Leinster, the Annals of Ulster and John O'Hart's Irish Pedigrees — represents one of the most thoroughly researched and documented Gaelic pedigrees presented to the Chief Herald's office in recent years.

In the Meantime

Until a formal grant is received, menbers of Clan Ó Comáin are asked not to purchase or display the commercial "Commane arms" products sold online, as these represent Norman heraldry that does not belong to the Gaelic sept and perpetuates a historical confusion that this clan is working to correct.

When a grant is received, it will be published on this website and made available to all clan memmbers. The story of that grant — an ancient Gaelic clan whose arms were lost with its history, now claiming its rightful place in the Irish heraldic tradition — will itself be a meaningful addition to one of the oldest and most remarkable family stories in Ireland.

A Note on Clan Recognition

Clan Ó Comáin was officially recognised by Clans of Ireland in 2025 — the national body for Irish clan recognition — providing formal acknowledgement of the clan's ancient Gaelic heritage and its place among the historic families of Ireland.

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